First Novel's Bite*

First novels are the toughest, most rewritten, most love/hate experience you'll ever have. Until novel 2, at least.

Getting into the structure of mysteries was a blessing for me because it provided some plot expectations that helped my character-centered stories. Sounds like that's true for you, too.

Dropping back story is essential - dribbling some back in here and there works wonders for shredding text where you want rolling story.

Writing book number 2 while allowing book 1 to mellow out is the best next move, IMHO. If it's second in a series or a separate stand-alone, it will add to your perspective and help you realize what themes play out naturally in your story lines, etc.

Book 2 helps firm up your subgenre orientation, if you need any. The agent who didn't like the pacing of your story might be a gal who likes chippier chics - she might say she wants a dead body earlier on, but Janet Evanovich, for one, often begins with subplot and doesn't hit solid plot drive until well past the first chapter. Inotherwords, agents and editors might say one thing and mean another.

What's your hook? Is it your protag's devotion to winning bake-offs which leads her into a world of intrigue circling around a gas stove and a dead baker? That's a cozy. That would drive a thriller-agent to instant rejection. But, if a traditional cozy's what you want to write, then you get some time to set up your protag's world and her place within it before having to have the dead appear.

Read. Read. Read. Read works by fellow Sisters In Crime to see how they work their craft and get to be published. Observe what works and what doesn't - get a sense of your place in the marketplace.

From some ear-to-the-ground observations, modern audiences do like action up front, even in a cozy, but it doesn't have to be a murderous action. Humor is a great sidekick to keep the reader on track. Lots of folks layer in such enhancements as humor once the story line is in decent shape. What works best for you and your protag?

There's lots of time for you to figure this all out. Let your inner writer have some space to explore before expecting a salable novel. Get to know yourself by writing more stories. Try your hand at short stories (it worked for me! Suddenly I'm a finalist in Malice Domestic's Agatha for Best Short Story!!!) It will be much easier seeing what needs tweaking once you've had some distance from it.

Spend more time writing than rewriting for a while. See how it goes.
Write On!
Nan

*(This comes by way of the Guppy Internet Chapter of Sisters In Crime. One gal struggling with the polishing of her first novel asked for advice. This is my reply. Beware: I give mine freely, and it's worth every penny, as my pal Clare2e would say.)

The Upside of Piggy Kids

My son made dinner yesterday. No, not for my husband and me. Rather, just for himself—in the middle of the night. From the looks of the debris, he made a large pot of pasta and sauce, accompanied by two of my Weight Watchers frozen dinners, a variety of leftover veggies, and several bowls of cereal. He used three pots, five cereal bowls, two dinner plates, three glasses, and almost every piece of silverware in the everyday drawer. He’s 20, but the way I felt this morning when I first saw the sink and the counter and the floor—and the chair and the table in the family room—he would’ve been lucky to see 21.

But there’s a plus to having a slob for a kid. And I have two, although the second one is now in San Francisco. I also have a husband whose name really should be Oscar. Not only have I become very good at digging out of messes, washing dishes, and removing stains and dried-on unidentifiable substances from all types of surfaces, I’ve also learned how to control my temper and my stress level. Not by burning incense and listening to Yani on my iPod. Not by chanting Om and concentrating on a little light flickering somewhere in the back of my brain. Not by turning off the overhead and scrubbing by candlelight.

What I do is picture all the ways I could murder my son. And while I'm at it, I imagine all the ways I could manipulate the evidence to make the other two look guilty. (I might as well take care of all three problems at once!) I’ve come up with some wonderful plot ideas this way. And if I can’t immediately use any of the ideas, at least the fire they spark in me often results in a day or two of very productive writing.

Oh, that son in San Francisco? The last time I visited him, I spent my entire vacation cleaning his apartment. He needed the super to fix a leak and had been putting off calling him because of the mess. That trip resulted in several months' worth of innovative plot ideas!

NaNo and the New Friday Feature?

I know I've mentioned this in the comments, but I'm pledged to NaNoWriMo this month for what I hope will be my own 50,000 words in November. This year, something like 90,000 folks signed up for the free, bragging-rights challenge. Today, our cumulative, self-reported word count is now up to 295 million!

Some people wonder about the quality of work generated by such an exercise. I understand, but quality's not the primary goal here, though flashes of brilliance always occur. The goal is to get involved, excited, and committed to this unique act of creation. If nothing else, the multitudes involved become more passionate readers, and that helps us all. And because I despise my first drafts, churning through them with a cheery scrum at my back is preferable to solitary misery. The MS my agent is trying to sell now is one whose first draft I finished during my first NaNo, and I hope to repeat the feat. NaNo demands that writers loosen up enough to be willing to generate garbage, but, outrunning your headlights and speeding across the chasms allows for unexpected wonders to happen, too. One feature this year is a weekly pep talk from a pro to our inbox. Here's the first:

When you sit down to begin that novel of yours, the first thing you might want to do is toss a handful of powdered napalm over both shoulders---so as to dispense with any and all of your old writing teachers, the ones whose ghosts surely will be hovering there, saying such things as, "Adverbs should never be...", or "A novel is supposed to convey...", et cetera. Enough! Ye literary bureaucrats, vamoose!

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works. Ah, but how can you know if it's working? The truth is, you can't always know (I nearly burned my first novel a dozen times, and it's still in print after 35 years), you just have to sense it, feel it, trust it. It's intuitive, and that peculiar brand of intuition is a gift from the gods. Obviously, most people have received a different package altogether, but until you undo the ribbons you can never be sure.

As the great Nelson Algren once said, “Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.” Most really good fiction is compelled into being. It comes from a kind of uncalculated innocence. You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what's going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.

A topic is necessary, of course; a theme, a general sense of the nexus of effects you'd like your narrative to ultimately produce. Beyond that, you simply pack your imagination, your sense of humor, a character or two, and your personal world view into a little canoe, push it out onto the vast dark river, and see where the currents take you. And should you ever think you hear the sound of dangerous rapids around the next bend, hey, hang on, tighten your focus, and keep paddling---because now you're really writing, baby! This is the best part.

It's a bit like being out of control and totally in charge, simultaneously. If that seems tricky, well, it's a tricky business. Try it. It'll drive you crazy. And you'll love it.

Tom Robbins

Shall we declare Fridays a day when we can all post updates about what we've been doing in the comments? That might include very-official things like actually writing works-in-progress or activities related to publishing. And Great! But, as far as I'm concerned, it might also be: mulling over an idea that's still percolating; reading or watching something inspiring (or envy-inducing); researching; keeping a personal journal or blogging; perhaps taking the necessary time and space to clear the cobwebs between efforts; even handling the peskiness of "real-life", so you can clear the decks for writing later. For so many of us, writing demands much but probably doesn't pay the mortgage (yet- stay hopeful). Feel free to stretch the definitions, and tell us what you've done for your writerly self this week.